The present invention relates in general to information processing, and more specifically to a system that facilitates dynamic allocation and de-allocation of computing resources to provide a number of virtual computing platforms as a computing product.
Today, computers are increasingly being used in almost every area of commerce, education, entertainment and productivity. With the growing popularity of the Internet, corporate and campus intranets, home networking and other networks, the trend is to use multiple computers, or processing platforms, to perform tasks and provide services. Thus, the use of computers and computing devices have become commonplace in day-to-day activities of large numbers of users from different walks of life, including those with little to no knowledge of how the portability of computer applications depends on specific computing platforms.
A “platform,” includes the underlying hardware or software (e.g., operating system, applications, utilities, and other processes) of a computer system. The platform defines a standard around which a computing system can be developed. Once the platform has been defined, software developers can produce appropriate software and users (e.g., consumers) can purchase appropriate hardware and software applications for the platform. Any number, type and combination of hardware and software can comprise a platform, or environment.
For instance, a platform configured to provide a search service on the Web might include a Linux server running Apache web server software, a Solaris server running a custom application server software and Oracle database software, a 100 Mbps Ethernet LAN connecting the servers, and the Internet.
“Computing” in connection with the platform refers to the activity by one or more users interacting with a computing environment, or platform, that includes a combination of hardware, software, and network resources. Such interaction by a user may be in the form of using the environment to accomplish a task using, for example, application software operably compatible with the environment. For instance, the user may interact with a platform to edit a document, send an email, execute a search using a search engine service, or any equivalent application generally known in the art. Computing also includes programming or configuring the computing environment itself to modify the operability of the computing environment.
In traditional models of computing, users acquire the components of the environment, configure them as needed, and maintain them through a period of use. A disadvantage of the traditional models of computing require the users to purchase or lease the components individually to establish a platform for meeting their computing needs. For instance, a word processing user may purchase a personal computer, an operating system, and a word processing application program. The user then typically installs the operating system on the computer and the word processor on the operating system. Similarly, a search service provider will purchase the hardware, such as two server computers, and will then install the software (e.g., the web server, the application server and the operating systems). Thereafter the provider will connect the hardware to the network, connect the network to the Internet, and then configure the software for communication according to a specific communication protocol (e.g., configure the web server to accept requests from clients and to obtain from the application server responses for the said request).
Traditional computing models include running a single application as a stand-alone application on a single computer as well as a “client-server” whereby a server computer on the Internet is used to transfer information to a client computer. Typically, the client computer is located at an end user's location, such as a personal computer in a user's home. This allows large amounts of information to be stored in, and accessed from, the server computer by many client computers. The client computers can access the server computer simultaneously. Another approach allows a user to obtain portions of executable programs from the server to operate an application program in functional “pieces” or components, on the client computer. For example, a user can run a word-processing program in a client-server mode where the server provides only those portions of the word-processing software to the user's computer on an as-needed basis.
Traditional computing models have the drawback of offering relatively limited choices. That is, users of today's computing services generally are required to choose to invest capital in specific computing devices while foregoing other types of devices. Consumers who engage in computing need to be knowledgeable of the underlying platform to ensure a purchased application software will operate correctly.
A few traditional models have attempted to provide computing as service. Although a timesharing model of early mainframe computers was employed to provide a pay-per-use pricing model, the pricing model failed to address other issues. For example, users are not presented with any choices as to how to modify or configure the associated computing environment or how to network additional resources, such as bandwidth or IP Addresses, with a conventional pay-per-use pricing scheme.
A well-known computing model referred as the “Application Service Provider” or ASP model eliminates the acquisition (and maintenance) of a computing infrastructure and introduces pay per use. This model removes the application from the end-user and might employ one or more servers. The ASP model allows a primary server to host a client-server application, or to host any type of data-processing resource such as a database, user interface, program component, data object, etc. The application can appear to the client as being hosted by the primary server when it is actually being provided by one or more other servers. The other servers can provide the application, or components, by having the client directly access the other server, or having the client access the other server through the primary server.
The drawback to this model, as well as other similar known models, includes an inherent inability to generalize and to scale for multiple applications and computing platforms. Another drawback of the ASP model is that it also eliminates user choices; one gets to choose the application, but not other components, such as hardware or network. This is a limitation for users which require high performance and high bandwidth as opposed to other users willing to forego either or both of these requirements for reduced costs. Yet another drawback with ASP models is that the applications are not easily customized for use in an ASP service. Still yet another drawback with ASP models is that often, ASP-ized applications are to be rewritten from scratch. So for new applications, and for in-house applications developed by organizations without core competence in ASP technology, the ASP model is not an effective solution. Still yet another drawback with ASP models is that the ASP model enables the use of the software but does not support programmability.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a system that improves upon the prior art.